Tracey Osborne is Assistant Professor in the School of Geography and Development and Director of the Public Political Ecology Lab at the University of Arizona. Her research investigates the political ecology of environmental markets, particularly carbon markets, and their implications for the lives and livelihoods of forest communities in the Global South. Specifically, she explores the intersection of carbon markets, development, and agrarian change as they relate to forestry-based carbon initiatives in Mexico.

The Yale Climate and Energy Institute will host a panel discussion on how global warming will affect New England in the 21st century and how the region is preparing for the coming changes. The meeting will take place at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, in Burke Auditorium of Kroon Hall, on 195 Prospect Street in New Haven and include short talks by climate and infrastructure experts and a panel discussion with Senator Chris Murphy.

Capturing CO2 and storing it underground has been proposed to be a major player in mitigating global climate change by reducing CO2 emission. Thermal power plants, being the largest point source of CO2 emission, naturally become the primary target of CO2 capture and storage (CCS). However, it is often overlooked that power plant is not only the largest CO2 emitter, but also the largest fresh water consumer.

We apply econometric methods to climate observations in order to disentangle the contribution to modern climate change from greenhouse gases and aerosols, both constituents of the atmosphere which been increasing in concentrations in response to industrial activity. Our preliminary results suggest a substantial masking of the greenhouse warming due to the compensating cooling effect that anthropogenic aerosols have on the Earth-atmosphere system.